Of God and Holy Water

A lot of noise has been made recently about an
incident at the Guruvayur temple in Kerala. A Congress politician,
Vayalar Ravi, had the humiliating experience of the temple authorities
doing a punyaham (ritual cleansing of the premises with holy
water) after the wedding of his son Unny there. I certainly sympathise
with the man: this is highly insulting, being 'unclean' and 'impure'.

What makes this interesting is the fact that Vayalar Ravi belongs to the
'backward-caste' Ezhavas, who are numerically powerful in Kerala, and
have been the mainstay of the Marxist party in the state. Many Ezhavas
have been agricultural labourers and tenant farmers who benefited from
the land-distribution and labour-friendly policies of the Left.

The Ezhavas also led the Vaikom Satyagraha of 1924 and the struggle that
led to the epoch-making Temple Entry Proclamation in 1936 that threw
open to all Hindus, regardless of caste, all of the-then kingdom of
Travancore's temples. This singular event enabled Ezhavas in particular
and the so-called 'lower-castes' of Kerala in general to gain
self-respect, and to participate fully in the economic and political
life of the state.

Kerala had a history of extreme caste prejudice concerning the
'pollution' of Nambudiri brahmins. There were detailed and precise rules
as to the proper physical distance from the brahmins to be maintained by
the different sudra castes such as Nairs, Pillais, Ezhavas, Pulayas,
Parayas et al.: something like five feet, 10 feet, 15 feet, etc. This is
so that they might not 'pollute' the brahmins by their shadows falling
on them.

Thus, the initial press reports about the Vayalar Ravi incident were
full of allusions to the bad old days of Kerala's caste-based apartheid.
The conclusion drawn was that a 'backward-caste' person being in the
temple caused it to be 'polluted'. But this is a very strange
conclusion, because thousands of 'backward-caste' Hindus visit the
Guruvayur temple every day. There is no way the temple can identify them
as such, or require ritual purification. There had to be something more.

Then came further information. The temple authorities clarified that
they did the ritual cleansing because the bridegroom was suspected of
not being a Hindu. It turns out that his mother, Mercy, is a Christian.
The Ezhavas are matrilineal, therefore the authorities felt that Unny
had to demonstrate his Hindu-ness, as he might be considered a Christian
by descent from his mother. They may have a point.

The Indian media dealt with this whole episode quite predictably; as
usual, the 'secular' 'progressives' waxed indignant at the 'casteist'
incident. Reams were written in high dudgeon about the obscurantist and
reactionary priests of Guruvayur. But the issue of the Christian mother
scarcely got any coverage. Railing about caste is more fun, I guess.

It is a fact that the Guruvayur temple takes a dim view of Christians
and non-Hindus in general. It explicitly forbids non-Hindus from
entering the temple. There is the famous case of the singer K J Jesudas
who wanted to sing inside the temple, but was prevented from doing so.
Jesudas is a practising Christian, but has sung a lot of devotional
Hindu songs, including at other temples.

I have heard many arguments about this. But I come down on the side of
the authorities: they have the right to restrict entry only to Hindus.
For, Hinduism is not looking to convert anybody, unlike the semitic
religions. Any non-Hindus coming into the temple, it can safely be
assumed, are not coming there to pray to the Hindu deity. They must be
coming in as tourists, to gawk. Since this is not a museum but a living
place of devotion, I think the authorities are right to insist that only
practising Hindus be allowed in -- presumably they will pray.

In Jesudas' case, the question was not whether he respects Hindu
deities, but whether he is Hindu. Since he isn't, I think the
authorities are perfectly within their right to not allow him in. If
Jesudas really wanted to go to Guruvayur that badly, he could have
converted to Hinduism.

'Secular' 'progressives' will jump on me for this opinion. They will
crucify me for that oxymoron, 'Hindu fundamentalism'. But wait, the very
same Jesudas had trouble getting his son baptised by a Christian church,
because Jesudas sang at Hindu temples! Jesudas and his wife are
card-carrying Christians. But the Christian church balked at the
ceremony of sprinkling holy water on their son because Jesudas had
committed the 'crime' of singing Hindu devotional songs!

Thus these Christians should be tarred with the same 'communal' brush as
the Guruyavur authorities. But of course not; in the lexicon of the
'secular' 'progressives', only Hindus can be 'communal'.

Similarly, there was an incident in Pakistan after Prime Minister
Vajpayee's ill-fated trip to Lahore. He visited the Minar-I-Pakistan, a
tower in that city. I am told that there is some significance to this
tower in regards to the creation of Pakistan. It may well be that the
call for a "Pakistan" or land of the pure was first made at this tower.
In any case, I got the impression that Vajpayee being there was a
significant and explicit concession that Partition was irreversible.

What was quite interesting was that after Vajpayee left the tower, a
group of Muslim fundamentalist Jamaat-I-Islami activists descended upon
the place and cleansed it with holy water! I guess this was because
Vajpayee was an 'infidel' kafir even though a missionary
religion should welcome infidels to come there to be converted to become
one of the faithful.

Once again, there was deafening silence from the 'secular'
'progressives' in the Indian media about this act of Muslim extremism. I
am not surprised. This is to be expected.

The lengths to which these 'secular' 'progressives' go was demonstrated
tellingly recently. The motley crew named SAHMAT protested vociferously
at the Millennium Peace Summit in New York City that the Vishala Hindu
Parishad, those dreaded communalist-divisive-fundamentalists, were
allowed to co-sponsor the event. Fair enough.

But a couple of days later, the Catholic Church came out with the 'Iesus
Dominus' document, which states that Catholics have an exclusive hotline
to heaven, and that all other religious paths are false, including their
fellow Christian sects. This is a document of truly breathtaking
chutzpah, obtuseness and arrogance, especially in this sceptical world
of today. Naturally the Vatican has no proof for their direct line to
their God, or even for the existence of their God: it is pure blind
dogma. And the Vatican makes no apologies for this extremely divisive
document. Of course, SAHMAT did not find it in their hearts to protest
against the Catholics, who also co-sponsored the Summit! By 'secular'
definition, Catholics couldn't possibly becommunalist-divisive-fundamentalists.

It just goes to show, there just isn't enough holy water going around to
drown all these communalist and hypocritical fools collectively.

Postscript

Sushama Londhe has an impressive site called a Tribute to Hinduism
which is a veritable treasure-trove of information about the religion. I found it very interesting to browse
through.

The BBC reported on
October 2 that a group of Christian terrorists, the National Liberation
Front of Tripura, has 'banned' the Hindu festival Durga Puja in Tripura.
They have warned any tribals that those celebrating this festival will
be shot. They declare that they want all of Tripura to be Christian.

It is the same terrorists who shot and killed a Hindu priest a few weeks
ago, in his own temple. Similarly, Bineshwar Brahma, a Hindu Bodo
activist and litterateur, was shot dead by Christian militants in
Guwahati in August, explicitly based on his religion. None of these
incidents has been reported widely, or at all, in the Indian print
media. I read about them at the BBC's online site.

Christians are on a rampage in the Northeast, indulging in ethnic
cleansing and religious violence, killing Hindus, supported by white
fundamentalist churches, especially American ones. The human rights of
Hindus are being violated: for instance, there are the Reangs who have
been ethnically cleansed from their homes. But this is not news for the
'secular' 'progressives'.

There seems to be a conspiracy of silence in the Indian print media
about the activities of the Christian Taliban of the Northeast. I
wonder, is this silence being bought with cold cash? Or is it purely
ideological? Why isn't anyone demanding the kind of action that was
taken when that Australian Christian missionary was murdered? Am I wrong
in concluding that the life of a white Christian is worth far more than
the lives of religious Hindus?

The assault on Hinduism continues elsewhere, too. Here is an e-mail that
reader Sridhar forwarded me. I have not verified these facts about the
books mentioned, I am merely forwarding the message.

September 27, 2000

We are enclosing the following information that has appeared in the
`Letters to the Editor' column of Hinduism Today. Please lodge your
protest with Encyclopedia Britannica. We also urge you to forward this
message to as
many persons as possible requesting them to lodge their protests.

Encyclopedia
Britannica online, you can see that Kali's Child (whose thesis is that Ramakrishna
was homosexual) is the first book recommended and also the fourth book
recommended. Narasingha Sil's appalling book Ramakrishna Revisited
is number
two. While we find these two books offensive, we nevertheless are not
requesting that they be stricken from their list. What we would like is
a representative list of the books concerning Sri Ramakrishna. Naturally
we would hope that they would include the basic source books concerning
Sri Ramakrishna: The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, Ramakrishna: The
Great Master and The Life of Sri Ramakrishna along with
more contemporary books such as
Christopher Isherwood's Ramakrishna and His Disciples or
Richard Schiffman's Sri Ramakrishna: Prophet for the New Age.
I'd like as many Hindus as possible to respond en masse the
Britannica's site (editor@britannica.com). While they can
ignore 20 letters from irritated or offended Hindus, they might not be
as cavalier with 1,000 letters. I would like ideas and lists of Hindu
organisations or individuals that might be interesting in responding to
this issue. It's bad enough that Kali's Child was highly touted
in academia and assigned in college classrooms, having it recommended
(twice!) by the Encyclopedia Britannica on their website is
even worse!